NEW YORK — The number of foreign children adopted by Americans plunged in the past year, leading adoption advocates to urge Congress to help reverse the trend.

Declines were recorded for all three countries that provided the most adopted children in the previous fiscal year. In China and Russia, government officials have been trying to promote domestic adoptions, while in Guatemala, a highly corrupt international adoption industry was shut down while reforms are implemented.

Figures for fiscal 2009, released by the State Department on Thursday, showed 12,753 adoptions from abroad, down from 17,438 in 2008 — a dip of 27 percent.

A member of a "sophisticated cocaine trafficking conspiracy" was convicted Monday in federal court in Denver of conspiring to distribute, and possessing with intent to distribute, five kilograms or more of cocaine, according to prosecutors.

A man who shot two eighth graders at Deer Creek Middle School in 2010, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity to attempted murder, will not be allowed to leave the Colorado Mental Health Institute's grounds without supervision, according to a Jefferson County District Court ruling.

After the San Francisco Bay Area, metro Denver experienced the biggest apartment rent increases this decade in the country. But plenty of new supply should put future rent gains closer to the national average, according to a new report from RealPage, a real estate research firm.